Video: Sharpening with the Emboss filter

In this movie I'll show you an alternate way to compensate for camera shake using the emboss filter. But first I want you to notice over here in the layers panel that we've got this white rectangle, and it represents the filter mask. And you can use it to mask away filtering effects. So for example if I were to switch to the brush tool which you can get by pressing the B key I'll see the little ghost busters icon because I can't directly paint a smart object. But if I click on the filter mask instead right next to the words smart filters then my brush becomes active because I can paint inside the filter mask.

Photoshop CC One-on-One is back, and this installment teaches you how to build on your basic knowledge and achieve next-level effects with this premiere image-editing program. Industry pro Deke McClelland shows you how to seamlessly move and patch areas of a photo with the Content-Aware toolset; stretch the brightness of a scene with automatic and custom Levels adjustments; create intricate designs with text and shapes; and morph an image with layer effects and transformations. Deke also shares his techniques for sharpening details, whether addressing noise and highlight/shadow clipping or camera shake, and converting a full-color image to black and white. The final chapters show you how to best print and save images for the web, making sure all your hard work pays off in the final output.

Topics include:

Performing automatic retouch, scaling, and more with the Content-Aware tools

Sharpening with the Emboss filter

In this movie I'll show you an alternate wayto compensate for camera shake using the emboss filter.But first I want you to notice over here in the layerspanel that we've got this white rectangle, and it represents the filter mask.And you can use it to mask away filtering effects.So for example if I were to switch to the brush tool which you canget by pressing the B key I'll see the little ghost busters icon because I can'tdirectly paint a smart object.But if I click on the filter mask instead right next to the words smart filtersthen my brush becomes active because I can paint inside the filter mask.

I'll go ahead and right click inside the imagewindow and increase the size value let's say to.300 pixels.And I'll leave the hardness set to 0%.And then I'll press the enter key or the returnkey on a Mac in order to hide that panel.And if you'reworking along with me, you want to press the D key to reinstate the default colorswhich are white for the foreground and blackfor the background when working inside a mask.And then press the X key In order to make the foreground color black, andthen you can paint away the filteringeffect right there inside Colleen's face for example.

So its a great way to selectively filter portions of your image.But in my case I want the filters to effect the entire image.In which case you can save some room here inside the layers panel by rightclicking inside the filter mask and choosing deletefilter mask, just to get rid of it.And that way it's not cluttering up the panel and you can always add it back inlater if you want to by right clickingon smart filters and then choosing add filter mask.In any case I'm going to leave mine gone.Now I'm going to press the M key to switch to the rectangular marquis tool.

And I'll press control J, orcommand J on the Mac, in order to create a copy of the smart object.Now I'm going to grab the smart filters and drag em anddrop em on the trash can in order to get rid of them.And that way we can start from scratch where this layer is concerned.Now, you want to go up to the filter menu.Choose Stylize, and then choose Emboss.And the Emboss filter creates this kind of Hans Solo in carbonite effect here.But it can be used in orderto compensate for camera shape.So once again you want to set the angle, to the angle of the shape.

Which we decided in the previous movie was zero degrees.The height value is analogous to the radiusvalue, so I'll leave it set to three pixels.And then you really don't want to take the amountvalue beyond 100% where this particular image is concerned.Now go ahead and click OK to accept the effect.Now this hardly looks like a sharpening effect at thispoint, but it will as soon as we apply ablend mode that will drop out the grays inside the image.And you do that by first right-clicking inside the Filter Maskhere and choosing Delete Filter Mask to get rid of it.

And then I'll double-click in the slider icon inorder to bring up the Blending Options dialog boxand you can see it happens a lot fasterbecause emboss is a much simpler filter than smart sharpen.And at this point,you now want to change the blend mode to oneof these contrast modes right here in the middle.Starting with overlay, and going down to linear light.The last two are not going to do you any good.Overlay is going to give you a little bit of a light effect.I'll go ahead and click okay in order to apply it.And then I'll turn the smart filters off for this particular layer.

So this is the original unsharpened version of the image.And this is the slightsharpening effect thanks to emboss, set to overlay.If you want something that packs a little more of a punch then double clickon the slider icons once again and switch up to hard light or linear light.If overlay is delivering too much of an effect, you can switch down to soft light.In my case, I'm going to take it all the way up to linear light.Vivid light, by the way is going to give youtoo much color and is going to give you theserough transitions as well where linear light isa more even affect as you can see here.

And it's a very strong effect as well, the strongest of the bunch.And then, you'll want to reduce the opacity value.Now, with a standard image, an opacity of 100% would be way over the top.You'd probably take the opacity down to something like 10 or 20%.In my case, I'm going to press shift+down arrow, a couple of times to take theopacity value down to 80%, and then I'll click OK in order to accept that change.All right now, for the sake of comparison, I'll turn offthe Emboss filter again that's the original version of the image.

If I press Control-Z, or Command-Z on the Mac, that's the newly-sharpened version.And if I turn off this top layer, which I'll just goahead and name Emboss, so we can keep track of what's going on.This is the version ofthe image subject to two passes of smart sharpen.Now I have to say, I think the smart sharpen effect looks better.However, the emboss effect is just so darn easy to apply.It's a single filter, it's a very fast filter.And, as with Smart Sharpen, you can change yoursettings just by double clicking on the word emboss.

And now, notice, the great things, is I'm not seeingthose grays that were dropped out by the blend mode.So I'm seeing the blending intact inside the embossed dialogue box, meaningthat I can change my settings with a higher degree of authority.So, for example, I could take the amount value upto 200% and actually see what it's going to do.Or, by contrast, I could take it down to say70 percent in order to reduce the amount of sharpening.And then click OK in order to apply that effect.And finally,if this image is intended for print, you want togo ahead and zoom out to the 50 percent zoom ratio.

in order to get the best sense for how it will look.And that, folks, is how you compensate for camera shakeand sharpen an image in one pass, using the emboss filter.

A: Deke updated the course to reflect changes in the 2014
version of Photoshop CC. The updates are concentrated in "The Content-Aware Collection" and "Creating and Formatting Text"
chapters, but there are new movies sprinkled throughout the course as well.

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